Quotes

“The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. You can do anything you decide to do.”
Amelia Earhart

“The Only Thing We Have to Fear is Fear Itself”
President Franklin D. Roosevelt

“The Arc of the Moral Universe is Long, But it Bends Towards Justice”
Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Government of the People, By the People, For the People”
President Abraham Lincoln

“No Problem of Human Destiny is Beyond Human Beings”
President John F. Kennedy

“The Welfare of Each of Us is Dependent Fundamentally Upon the Welfare of All of Us”
President Theodore Roosevelt

“Sometimes it’s in the doing, it’s in the action, it’s in the organizing that the best of you comes out and you’ll see it others.”
John Lewis

“Sometimes your job is just to make stuff work.”
President Barack Obama

“The most effective way to do it, is to do it.”
Amelia Earhart

“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.”
Steve Jobs

“Your time is limited, don’t waste it living someone else’s life. … have the courage to follow your heart and intuition”
Steve Jobs

“…for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.”
Steve Jobs

“Everyone on this planet is given the same 24 hours in the day. The question is: what do you choose to do with yours?”
Anno Sensei, Summer 2002 (not exact quote – still researching it)

“You must be the change you wish to see in the world”
Mahatma Gandhi

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
Buckminster Fuller

“Fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.”
Ruth Bader Ginsburg

“If you want to make impact at scale, you have to work with the players that are producing at scale. Sometimes we have a feeling that the task that we’ve taken on our shoulders is rather big. But with a little naivety and arrogance, we can do a lot.”
Henk Jan Beltman, CEO/CCO, Tony Chocoloney

“There are two possibilities when people say you’re nuts: either you really are nuts or you’re onto something no else has tried.”
Larry Ellison

“I want this [the U.S. Digital Service] to happen. And I don’t want us to find a reason not to do it just because it hasn’t been done before.”
President Barack Obama

“It’s no secret that many people feel alienated and distant from government. And I think the opportunities for us to think about how tech can empower citizens and make them feel ownership for their government is really important….ultimately our goal is – or should be – to make “we the people” mean something in a 21st-century context”
President Barack Obama

“Do or do not. There is no try.”
Yoda

“If you think you are too small to make a difference, then try sleeping with a mosquito.”
His Holiness the Dalai Lama

“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”
President Theodore Roosevelt

“The problems you can identify are not the same as the problems that you need to solve”
Albert Wong

“There are two kinds of problems. The problems that you choose. And the problems that choose you.”
Gary Bolles

“Only a fool learns from his own mistakes. The wise man learns from the mistakes of others.”
Otto von Bismarck

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”
Upton Sinclair

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
(Commonly paraphrased as “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”)

George Santayana

“The future is already here – it’s just not evenly distributed.”
William Gibson

“[on usability and design]…if you tasted some food that you didn’t think tasted right, you would assume that the food was wrong. But for some reason, it’s part of the human condition that if we struggle to use something, we assume that the problem resides with us.”
Jony Ive, Apple

“Life is what happens to you while you are busy making other plans”
Allen Saunders, and later John Lennon

Go to the people.
Live with them, Learn from them, Love them.
Start with what they know, build with what they have.
But of the best leaders, When the work is done, The task accomplished,
The people will say, “We have done this ourselves.”

Lao-Tzu (Chinese poem, 700 B.C.)

“Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier.”
Colin Powell

“It’s kind of fun to do the impossible.”
Walt Disney

“Fight like you are right… listen like you are wrong.”
Andy Grove (first heard from, and credit to: John Lilly)

“There’s a way to do it better…find it.”
Thomas A. Edison

“Do the best you can, until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”
Maya Angelou

“Never interrupt someone doing something you said couldn’t be done.”
Amelia Earhart

“Share your knowledge. It is a way to achieve immortality.”
His Holiness the Dalai Lama

“Our only limitations are those we set up in our own minds.”
Napoleon Hill

If you think you can do a thing or think you can’t do a thing, you’re right.
Henry Ford

If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.
Henry Ford

It is not the employer who pays the wages. Employers only handle the money. It is the customer who pays the wages.
Henry Ford

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not ‘Eureka!’ (I found it!) but ‘That’s funny …’
Isaac Asimov

“Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
Mark Twain

“The best reason to go into business – because you feel strongly that you can change things.”
Richard Branson, The Virgin Group

“Your company should act as a springboard for ambitious employees, not a set of shackles.”
Richard Branson, The Virgin Group

“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.”
Warren Buffett

“Why of course the common people don’t want war… But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country”
Hermann Goering, at the Nuremberg trials.

“There is nothing quite so frightening as ignorance in action.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

It is far better to have seen it once than to have heard of it a thousand times
Mongolian proverb

“It is easier to begin a war than it is to end it.”
Napoleon

“No one starts a war – or rather, no one in his sense ought to do so – without first being clear in his mind what he intends to achieve by that war and how he intends to conduct it.”
Carl Von Clausewitz, 1780-1831

“In Aikido, we do not train to become powerful or to throw down an opponent. Rather, we train in hope of being of some use, however small our role may be, in the task of bringing peace to humankind around the world.”
Osensei, founder of Aikido

“It is better to conquer yourself than to win a thousand battles. Then the victory is yours. It cannot be taken from you, not by angels or by demons, heaven or hell.”
Buddha

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
Joseph Goebbels, German Minister of Propaganda, 1933-1945

“I do the very best I know how, the very best I can; and I mean to keep doing so until the end. If the end brings me out all right, what is said against me won’t amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, 10 angels swearing I was right would make no difference.”
Abraham Lincoln

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”
Arthur C. Clarke

“Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”
Steve Jobs

“The ones who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones that do.”
Steve Jobs

“Always make new mistakes”
Esther Dyson

“Changes and chances favour the prepared mind”
Pierre Haren, ILOG founder

“Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that”
Martin Luther King

The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep’s throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty.
Abraham Lincoln

Happy the man, and happy he alone,
He, who can call today his own;
He who, secure with, can say,
Tomorrow do thy worst, for I have lived today.

Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus, Roman poet, 65 BC – 8 BC)

“It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop.”
Confucius

“Choose a job you love, and you will never work a day in your life.”
Confucius

Time is that quality of nature which keeps events from happening all at once. Lately it doesn’t seem to be working.
Anonymous

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